"We’ve just come back from a week at Liberty Lykia and, overall, we’ve had a cracking holiday. No hotel is perfect and this one certainly has a few quirks, but there was far more to like than dislike.
First things first, the setting is absolutely gorgeous. The hotel is squeezed between two mountains with crystal-clear sea right on your doorstep. You could quite happily sit looking at the view all day. The beach is very rocky though, so pack beach shoes unless you enjoy walking barefoot over what feels like a bag of marbles.
Be warned… this place is enormous. I genuinely reckon I added 10,000 steps a day just trying to get around. It’s hilly, there’s stairs everywhere and only a couple of lifts from the beach. By the end of the week my watch probably thought I’d signed up for an ultra marathon. My VO2 Max must’ve gone up five points just looking for the nearest bar. Massive respect to the people doing their morning runs because I needed a lie down after breakfast.
Talking of food, there’s pretty much somewhere open 24 hours a day, you just need to work out where that somewhere actually is. It can feel a bit like an Easter egg hunt at times and the advertised opening times occasionally seem to be taken as a rough guideline rather than a promise.
The coffee shop deserves its own paragraph because it was brilliant. Easily the friendliest staff in the resort. They even went off to another bar to fetch milkshakes because they didn’t serve them themselves. That’s proper customer service and they deserve a mention.
The buffet food was generally good with plenty of choice, but all the restaurants are open-air. That means you’re basically sharing your dinner with flies, wasps and mosquitoes. We even saw insects crawling over some of the food a couple of times which wasn’t ideal. We soon learnt to grab things as they were freshly brought out. If you’ve got picky kids, don’t worry. The beach bar and the kids’ restaurant will happily make a plain cheeseburger if you ask.
The kids’ club looked excellent. Loads of staff, sensible check-in and check-out procedures and it all seemed really well organised. If you’ve got younger children I’d imagine they’d have a brilliant time.
The water park is good fun with seven or eight slides and, best of all, it never seemed that busy. Plenty of loungers and nice and peaceful compared to the main pool. Health and safety might not approve of absolutely everything but we all survived.
Sunbeds were easy enough to find on the beach and around the water park. Around the main pool it was busier but thankfully we’re talking an 8am towel dash rather than the usual 4am Olympic event you get at some resorts.
There are loads of activities. The football academy looked brilliant and I found myself wishing they’d let middle-aged dads join in. There are tennis and padel courts all over the place too. Hardly anyone seemed to be using them though and I never really worked out where you were supposed to get the rackets from.
One thing I found slightly amusing was the free kayaks. They’re available from 9 until 12… in theory. Every time we asked, apparently the sea was too choppy. Oddly enough, people were happily paddleboarding, bodyboarding and doing other paid water sports at exactly the same time. Funny that.
On that note, pretty much all the water sports cost extra, which surprised me for a five-star all-inclusive as we’ve stayed elsewhere where they’re included.
The rooms were probably the biggest disappointment. Ours felt quite cramped for three of us and the air conditioning seemed to have a personality of its own. The power also randomly cut out every so often. More than once I was woken at 2am when everything suddenly burst back into life with an enthusiastic beep from the air conditioning. Thanks for that.
The beach canopies also felt a bit odd. They’re functional enough but don’t really suit such a beautiful setting. Thatched roofs would’ve looked so much nicer.
Every afternoon the pirate booze cruises drift past blasting music across the bay. Depending on your taste, it’s either entertaining or the soundtrack to your afternoon nap being completely ruined.
Another slight annoyance was the photographers. Fair play, they’re only doing their job, but after saying “no thanks” for what felt like the fifteenth time I did start wondering if I needed it printed on a T-shirt.
Now… smoking.
It is absolutely everywhere.
There are no-smoking signs, but they seem to be treated more as decoration than instruction. Around the pools, outside restaurants, near the kids’ water park… people happily puffing away on what looked like oxygen sticks for bad decisions. If cigarette smoke bothers you, it’s probably the biggest negative about the resort.
The evening entertainment was exactly what you’d expect. A very enthusiastic hype man trying to convince everyone they’re having the greatest night of their lives. Some evenings were genuinely good, others were a little flat, but that’s holiday entertainment for you.
The transfer from Dalaman takes about two hours. That’s fair enough. The driving, however, was… adventurous. There were moments where I genuinely wondered if our driver was trying to unlock achievements on Euro Truck Simulator.
English wasn’t spoken brilliantly everywhere but everyone was friendly and tried their best. Oddly enough, my very rusty German seemed to work better than English in a few places.
Overall, we genuinely had a lovely holiday. The location is one of the nicest we’ve ever stayed in, the grounds are beautiful, the coffee shop staff deserve a pay rise and there’s loads for families to do.
If they could sort the smoking, teach the flies to pay for dinner, let the kayaks out occasionally and stop my air conditioning trying to wake the entire family at 2am, it’d be very close to perfect."
